Neil deMause: The Website

Still more on those changes to 1099 tax form filings for small businesses and the self-employed:

The massive expansion of requirements for businesses to file 1099 tax forms that was hidden in the 2,409-page health reform bill took many by surprise when it came to light last month. But it’s just one piece of a years-long legislative stealth campaign to create ways for the federal government to track down unreported income.

The result: A blizzard of new tax forms that the Internal Revenue Service will begin rolling out next year… [read more]

The Port-au-Prince earthquake is four months in the past, but the suffering — and efforts by Haitians to raise funds to help survivors — goes on:

This week is a special one for Haitians: Today, May 18, is Haitian Flag Day, commemorating the day in 1803 when Haitian revolutionaries chose the blue-and-red banner to represent their country; on Thursday, Haitians worldwide mark the 267th birthday of Toussaint L’Ouverture, the former slave who helped lead the nation to independence.

This year’s celebrations are simultaneously more subdued and more focused, as the international Haitian community works to rebuild from the devastating earthquake that struck near the capital of Port-au-Prince on January 12, killing an estimated 230,000 people and leaving one million homeless… [read more]

New York City and state are getting more and more isolated in their stance in favor of fingerprinting food stamp applicants:

The Obama administration has waded into the running debate over New York’s practice of fingerprinting food stamp applicants, with a top Agriculture Department official urging the state to discontinue a practice he deems costly and ineffective.

“More cost-effective alternatives to finger imaging [an electronic fingerprinting method] should be actively considered both as a cost savings and as a means of program simplification,” wrote USDA Under Secretary Kevin Concannon in a letter to state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance deputy commissioner Elizabeth Berlin that was sent on May 7, but first made public on Friday… [read more]

When Mayor Bloomberg threatened to cut all kinds of services back in January, turns out he wasn’t kidding:

The big headline from Mayor Bloomberg’s announcement yesterday of his final city budget plan was that 6,414 city school jobs would be eliminated in response to an anticipated $493 million in reduced state education funding to New York City. But buried in the 4,024-page budget itself are dozens more cuts that would affect scores of city services, from libraries to summer youth jobs… [read more]

Madison Square Garden is closing for renovations — but only if you’re a girl athlete:

Proving the old line that the best way to find real news in the Times is to read the stories end-to-beginning, the Paper of Record offers up a classic buried lede in its article today about the upcoming renovations to Madison Square Garden. Round about the sixth paragraph, sportswriter Richard Sandomir reveals:

One of [Madison Square Garden’s] properties, the Liberty of the W.N.B.A., will have to play home games elsewhere beginning in 2011. A possibility is the Prudential Center in Newark, where the Nets will play for two seasons before moving to their new home in Brooklyn.

That’s home games for three years, as that’s how long the $775 million-or-so plan to gut the World’s Most Famous Arena and build a new one inside its shell is scheduled take, in order to limit construction to summers and thus avoid inconveniencing the boy teams that play there in the wintertime… [read more]

Okay, maybe the crazy right-wingers who think the health care reform law will bring about the end of civilization have a case after all:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — An all-but-overlooked provision of the health reform law is threatening to swamp U.S. businesses with a flood of new tax paperwork.

Section 9006 of the health care bill — just a few lines buried in the 2,409-page document — mandates that beginning in 2012 all companies will have to issue 1099 tax forms not just to contract workers but to any individual or corporation from which they buy more than $600 in goods or services in a tax year… [read more]

Yes, three articles in one day. In this one, I delve into a much-hyped Bloomberg anti-poverty program that didn’t deliver as hoped:

When Mayor Bloomberg announced in 2007 that he was launching a pilot program to give cash incentives to poor New Yorkers for changing their behavior—including bonuses for such activities as attending parent-teacher conferences and holding down a job—the hope was to come up with a novel approach to ending poverty.

“Even though it turns my stomach to pay a mother $10 to see a doctor,” Chinese-American Planning Council executive director David Chen, a member of Bloomberg’s poverty commission, told City Limits at the time, “in a practical sense it works.”

Or maybe not… [read more]

When is a welfare scam not a welfare scam?

If you read the Which Lazy Bastards Are Ripping You Off section of yesterday’s tabloids — you can find it after the Who Is Sandra Bullock Not Sleeping With/Adopting section — you may have spotted the story that the Post headlined “Millionaires’ welfare ‘con’”: The Brooklyn DA’s office was prosecuting 32 New Yorkers for receiving nearly $1 million in welfare benefits they weren’t entitled to. The Post zeroed in on a couple of landlords with “three luxury vehicles” who’d lied about their assets to get taxpayer cash; for NY1, the hook was a married Brooks Brothers employee who claimed to be a single mom on her application, raking in $460,000.

Only one problem with the headlines (and Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes’ press release that started the whole thing): Welfare benefits — aka public assistance, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or whatever the government is calling the cash it allots to poor people to use for expenses other than food and medical care — turn out not to be involved at all… [read more]

Now that New York City’s comptroller has charged that the city’s development arm illegally withheld $125 million in revenues from the city treasury, does he actually have a shot at getting it back?

Comptroller John Liu’s finding that the Economic Development Corporation (EDC) had shortchanged the city treasury by $125 million raises the question of whether the comptroller can force the EDC to return the monies.

Asked at a telephone press briefing on Wednesday if he’d use his power to refuse to sign off on city contracts to compel EDC to pass the money along (EDC, though effectively a branch of the mayor’s office, is technically a non-profit corporation that contracts with the city to do economic development), Liu replied: “I hope it doesn’t need to get any further beyond this point,” adding: “We will use every authority we have in this office, and I imagine the mayor will do the same thing, to get that $125 million.”

It seems unlikely, however, that the mayor will have Liu’s back, since two mayoral agencies have already signed off on the EDC’s practice… [read more]

A newspaper report claims the Tampa Bay Rays could reap $40 million a year in added revenue from a new stadium. Does it pass the smell test?

For those of you who read the Tampa Tribune religiously — and who doesn’t? — you no doubt saw the long piece yesterday running down everything that’s wrong with Tropicana Field. Among the complaints: The luxury boxes have obstructed views of flyballs, the catwalks get in the way (whether of flyballs or of watching them, the author doesn’t seem clear), and the food concessionnaire is crappy — which may be the first suggestion that a team should build a new stadium just to get out of a concessions contract since Tim Naehring declared Fenway Park to be obsolete for its lack of chef’s salads.

But the more interesting tidbit is one that’s almost brushed over in the article: Citing unnamed “experts,” the Trib claims that “without the amenities and attractions found at modern ballparks, the Tampa Bay Rays are missing out on a potential $40 million in additional revenue… [read more]